David Read Free Page A

English until she arrived in Canada a little more than ten years ago, a sixteen-year-old girl knowing no one and not knowing where she was going to go, but in spite of a thick German accent, speaks with a clarity and exactitude unequalled by anyone I’ve ever known except one. And now, after today, the only one I still know.
    â€œThere are a lot of things that would need to be taken care of first, arrangements that would need to be made.”
    â€œBut these arrangements, they can be made. These affairs, they do not prohibit you.”
    â€œThey don’t prohibit me, no, but—”
    â€œNo, they do not prohibit you. And you would like to see the birthplace of Goethe, of Schopenhauer, of Beethoven, would you not? To learn their language, perhaps?”
    â€œI don’t need a holiday, if that’s what you mean.”
    â€œYou say this word like it is a curse word.”
    â€œWhat word?”
    â€œ Holiday , obviously.”
    â€œI think you’re hearing things. I only meant that I’m not complaining about my life. You’ve never heard me say I’m unhappy. You’ve never once heard me complain about my life.”
    Once I’ve retrieved my glasses, I decide that while I’m in the bedroom I might as well relieve myself. I was the fourth man in Chatham to have indoor plumbing, but I decide to use the chamber pot instead. Out of habit I aim for the left-hand side of the pot, let the urine silently run down the side and slowly gather and rise at the bottom of the bubbling bowl. It’s my mother’s pot— was my mother’s pot—and I can still remember how pleased she was when she was finally able to own a store-bought, Detroit-manufactured chamber pot decorated with blue horizontal stripes. When her rheumatismgot so bad she rarely left the house except to attend church—the highlight of her day the dragging of her gnarled limbs out of bed to sit in her chair by the window—she still made a point of every day dusting that chamber pot. By then she’d bought another, cheaper pot to use for what it was intended for, but the blue-striped chamber pot sat pride of place on top of the bureau in her bedroom, right between her bible and a copy of the legal document declaring her and her son free Negroes.
    In the five minutes it takes me to return to the library, Loretta has let herself in, is squatting on her heels and scratching Henry’s stomach, a long canine grin carved into his face, all four black legs pointed straight up in the air like he’s unconditionally surrendered. “This is a most unimpressive watchdog,” Loretta says, still scratching.
    Sitting back down in my chair, “I’m afraid you’ve ruined him forever for that line of work.” We both know that’s a lie, that it’s only her familiar footsteps or mine on the front porch that elicit whimpers of expectation rather than howls of aggression. One of Loretta’s tenants is a butcher from Dresden who always gives her a cow bone along with his rent for what she tells him is her dog. Loretta’s business contacts, past and present, know as much about her as mine do about me.
    She gives Henry an all-done slap on his belly that makes a hollow sound like a single tap on a drum and stands up. Henry flips over onto his side and we both watch her rise to her full height of six feet. Henry wags his tail; I smile. What man doesn’t want more—more whiskey, more money, more years? And yet, when it comes to women, it’s tiny feet they desire, a pinched waist, a doll’s dimensions. Enough! or Too much, Mr. Blake wrote. A world in a grain of sand wasn’t the only blessed vision he knew about.
    â€œYou are home early tonight,” Loretta says, settling into the other chair on the other side of the fire. She’s the onlyone who uses it—it’s covered in the blanket she knit while sitting in it—but like the key to the front door